Covid on Campus and Exercise Woes

Thursday morning I sat waiting for the results of a rapid-Covid test because a married couple here on the continuum care campus has it and is under quarantine. Contact tracing of their whereabouts put them within one degree of someone I sat next to at a recent meal and she’d been in their unit with them the day before they got sick. The dining areas in both restaurants were closed (until Monday) and that night they got thoroughly cleaned which included the use of a large ultrasonic UV-C cleaning machine that the company describes at a “dual emitter UV-C sterilizer specifically designed to work in tandem to emit germ deactivating UV energy.” It supposedly cleans the very air we breathe and every surface with lights so strong you can’t look at it without special goggles thus it’s done during times when all good little soldiers are no where around. It’s same machine they use to disinfect airplanes and hospitals. The management applied for a special grant to buy it and this was the first time it was used.

Everything on our calendar got canceled for Thursday including I was supposed to get my apartment cleaned in the morning and I set my alarm at the crack of dawn to be ready for the guy. But he’s the only one trained on our new ultrasonic UV-C machine so I’ve been put on hold while he gears up for being The Germ Terminator. By the end of the day when the results of everyone’s rapid covid tests were known we all breathed a sigh of relief because they proved that the only ones with it are the couple with covid symptoms plus three others who’d been in close contact and tested positive but they don’t have symptoms. All are under house arrest until they test negative again. And yes, the One Degree Woman was one of "the three others."

The rest of us could resume normal routines but masks and public distancing through out the place are required and we can only get our food in to-go boxes until Monday. I’ve already gotten my first boxed meal and it was so good I wouldn’t mind emergence rations every day. In the box was a thick steak to die for (poor choice of words considering), mashed potatoes and broccoli. All we had to do is place an order by phone from a three item menu and then pick it up 30 minutes later, disregarding the normal 11:30 to 1:00 and 4:00 to 7:00 hours when the kitchen is generally serving.

Topic Change: When I moved into this place in October my weight had dropped eight pounds due to the packing and unpacking and forgetting to eat during those craziness days but the holidays put them right back on again. So I dug out my I-pod with my treadmill playlist and I’ve been on that machine every day for the past five days. Going to a gym that is virtually across the hall is handy and when I get off the treadmill I walk the distance of our hall and back to Helen Reddy singing I am Woman and that always makes me feel like---well, I could do anything. Anything but stay on that treadmill for that last song on my playlist...but I'll get there. 

I have such a love/hate relationship with exercise---mostly the latter. I love the fact that it helps me lose weight but I have to work myself up to do it, get thoroughly disgusted with myself. It just doesn’t stick as life style routine. Never has, never will. It’s always been punishment for being fat from the time I was 14 and my mom took me to my first gym aka fat camp where one of the things they did to me was wrap me in wet cloth and stick me in a sauna.

There’s a woman here who is a perky and petite blonde who I nicknamed The Cheerleader the first time I saw here at a tailgate party. She was knitting and throwing her arms up in the air often enough that I was sure she was loosing stitches. Turns out she really was a cheerleader in both high school and college. Married the star quarterback. Divorced the star quarterback. Then she married twice more, both times apparently to nice guys who ended up dying on her. She’s an exercise fiend. She’s always got her Nordic poles with her walking her little feet off outside inside, good weather and bad weather. She says it’s her job to stay healthy and walking with her Nordic poles keeps her arm bones strong. She doesn’t believe in popping pills like I do for my bones. I don’t believe in spending several hours a day doing something I’d absolutely hate.

It the past I had the typical stereotype for cheerleaders in my head---stuck up and shallow---but our cheerleader is nothing like that. Whenever someone new walks into to the cafe` or the lobby she’s on them with a greeting---a regular little welcome wagon. She’s not the least bit shy which I both admire and recoiled from at first. I kept looking for a hidden agenda like maybe she’s noisy and her perky little welcome wagon covered that up. But, nope, she genuinely seems to care about people. For example when she found out I like art she told me about the art professor living here and she made sure to point her out to me when we happened to all be at the same dinner table. The Cheerleader does that sort of thing all the time, matches people up with like interests.

There are two people here on campus who are tuned into what everyone else is doing, and The Cheerleader one of them. If you want to know something you know who to ask. But the two of them are opposing forces. Our cheerleader is all about spreading positive energy and the other is all about spreading discontent.

Since I wrote the above I got a request from the management to go to the office to get a second Covid test because contact tracing---again---put me at a party earlier in the month where someone in attendance just tested positive. I passed this test too, but it makes me want to google where I can get a bi-hazardous suit so I can socialize without fear that we're playing Russian Roulette.  ©

My latest 600 piece jigsaw puzzle, started is Saturday night, finished Monday morning. Fairly easy but still fun and different than others.